


5 Times Potya Found a Home, and 1 Time Potya Found a Home for Another

by Kenda1L



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Animal Abuse, Backstory, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Headcanon, M/M, Minor Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky, Trigger warning:, Yuri Plisetsky - Freeform, potya - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 18:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13300263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kenda1L/pseuds/Kenda1L
Summary: Yuri is four years old and his mama has given him a gift before leaving on yet another tour. “She will keep you company while I am gone, Yurotchka,” she says, while he stares down, rapt, at the tiny kitten he has just been handed. “When you hug her, I will feel it and know you are thinking of me.”She is just a tiny puff ball of fur and teeth and claws, and she fits perfectly in Yuri's cupped hands.Or, in which the author has way too many potential headcanons about how Yuri got Potya and couldn't resist.





	5 Times Potya Found a Home, and 1 Time Potya Found a Home for Another

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: one of the scenarios does feature animal abuse/death. If this is something you don't want to read, then I suggest skipping number 2. Full summary of what happens is in the end notes.

1.

Yuri is four years old and his mama has given him a gift before leaving on yet another tour.

 “She will keep you company while I am gone, Yurotchka,” she says, while he stares down, rapt, at the tiny kitten he has just been handed. “When you hug her, I will feel it and know you are thinking of me.”

 She is just a tiny puff ball of fur and teeth and claws, and she fits perfectly in Yuri's cupped hands.

 "What are you going to name her?" his mother asks, when Yuri doesn’t speak. He looks up at his mama with the stubborn look he had inherited from his father and already perfected.

 "Puma Tiger Scorpion," he declares with all the fierceness a name like that deserves.

 His mama laughs and laughs until she's sitting helplessly on the floor while her little boy climbs all over her and Puma Tiger Scorpion claws tiny pinprick holes into her skirt. Her own father shakes his head indulgently and doesn’t comment on the tears in her eyes that aren’t entirely from laughter.

The memory keeps her smile genuine through every interview and press event the attends, and at night she could swear she feels the pressure of her little boy's arms squeezing her tight.

 

2.

Yuri is nine years old, and he is slamming his fists into another boy’s face, over and over and over again. Next to where Yuri sits on the boy’s chest is an old potato bag that has been tied tightly shut. It is wriggling.

Yuri doesn’t stop until a passerby grabs him by his neck and jacket and hauls him up and away. The other boy is a sobbing mess of snot and blood and broken bone, and red hot curls of vicious satisfaction curl in Yuri’s stomach. It warms him, even as the winter wind whips his hair into knots and numbs his nose and freezes the blood flecks on his cheeks. The man who pulled him away holds him by his arms hard enough to bruise and shakes him until his head is snapping back and forth, but Yuri hardly hears the words he yells. All he can hear are tiny mewls and all he sees are the weak movements inside the bag, the heavy brick lying next to it. The man has finally left him to go kneel beside the other boy. Yuri edges quietly towards the potato sack. He snatches it up and takes off just as the man looks back towards him. Shouts and footsteps follow him but he leaves them behind easily; he knows the Moscow streets in the way only kids whose families spend more time at work than at home do.

It’s only when he is hidden in an alley a few streets over from his _Dedushka’s_ apartment that he stops, bends over to brace his (bleeding? Or just bloody?) hands on his knees and catch his breath. The bag he still holds swings and bumps lightly against his calf. He sits down in the icy muck (not like his clothes can get any dirtier; _Dedushka_ will be so disappointed that he has already ruined the jacket they had saved months for, while his old one grew tighter and tighter around his arms and chest). He slowly works the knotted bag open; the fabric is stiff and frozen over with ice crystals like it had been tossed in water before some vicious mind had come up with a better plan to get rid of its contents.

By the time he gets it open, the bag is silent and unmoving. Inside are three small, bedraggled bodies, cold and unmoving. Yuri bites at his split knuckles to hold back a scream and wishes he hadn’t left the scene so quickly, had gotten in a few dozen more hits. He also wishes he’d grabbed the bag and bolted as soon as it had dropped to the ground. Even seconds were important, and he’d used up too many of them.

He almost misses the feeble movements inside the bag as he angrily scrubs dried blood and tears from his cheeks, but he feels fabric shift against his thigh where the bag sits in a sad and rumpled heap next to him. He has the bodies out and in his arms before he even realizes he had moved. Two of them are cold and still and stiff with frost, but the other one…

It lets out a small, pathetic squeak and nuzzles weakly into the warmth that gathers in the crook of his elbow. Yuri lets out a sound like a sob and curls his arm closer around the small body. He quickly unzips his jacket and gently puts the kitten inside his shirt, right next to his armpit where he knows it’s warmest. He puts the other two bodies back in the bag, throat tight and aching, and gets up from the ground. He is only five minutes from _Dedushka’s_ apartment, but he makes it in less than three.

When he enters the small and dingy one bedroom apartment, _Dedushka_ is waiting for him and he is definitely disappointed, but it has nothing to do with his ruined jacket. _Dedushka_ kneels before him, wincing as his knees creak and pop, and takes his hands, examining the split knuckles. One of them has started to swell and turn purple and Yuri isn’t sure if it was the cold or the adrenaline that had numbed the pain, but either way, the effect is wearing off quickly under _Dedushka’s_ warm hands.

“Yurotchka, what have you done this time,” he says sadly. Yuri can’t answer; _angerfearpanicguilt_ blocks his airways and keeps the words deep inside, a sharp and heavy pressure against his sternum and ribs. Instead, he clenches his jaw and his fists and holds out the hand still holding the bag. His other arm is still clenched tight around his body to keep his precious cargo safe. _Dedushka_ takes the bag and looks inside. His eyes soften and crease with sadness. Yuri carefully reaches inside his jacket and shirt to pull out the third kitten, still wet and bedraggled and shivering, but now it stares at them with eyes that are blue blue blue in the way all kittens’ are when they have only just opened.

 _Dedushka_ takes the wriggling body from his grandson and cradles it to his chest. His hands envelope it completely. Yuri knows how warm those hands are, how they feel against cold and frozen skin, fresh from the snow and burning as heat finally starts to soak in. “Go get towels, and that desk lamp from your room that always gets too hot,” he says, and Yuri pelts across the room to do as bidden.

When _Dedushka_ has finished drying the kitten and it is firmly ensconced in a towel nest with the lamp casting heat over it, he drags Yuri into the bathroom to clean his hands, his face and neck and even his ears. (And who knew blood could get behind your ears when you are trying to crush someone’s face in with your fists? Well, Yuri does, now, he supposes.) _Dedushka’s_ lips are tight and bloodless as he works, and he doesn’t look Yuri in the eye. That’s okay; Yuri’s not sure he could hold his gaze even if he were to try.

“Did anyone see you who might know you?” he finally asks into the silence. Yuri shakes his head. “That thing is probably still going to die. Don’t get your hopes up, _kotenok_ .” Yuri bites his lip until he tastes iron, and nods. _Dedushka_ sighs heavily. He pulls Yuri down from his perch on the bathroom sink and runs a hand through Yuri’s hair; it gets caught in the snaggles and knots, and he sighs again. “Go get a bag of snow from outside for your knuckles, and then put your coat in the sink to soak.” Yuri escapes the bathroom as quickly as possible. He wants to stop to check the little heat nest, but knows that if he does, he might just snap _Dedushka’s_ last thread of patience. Yuri already causes too much trouble; he tries not to make it worse by disobeying.

A week later, when they both watch a tiny ball of fluff turbocharge across the living room in pursuit of crumpled balls of paper, _Dedushka_ turns to him and asks, “What are you going to name him?”

Yuri furrows his brow, and thinks of the two small bodies that lay in a box full of snow on the balcony, waiting for the ground to thaw enough for a burial. “Puma Tiger Scorpion,” he says finally. _Dedushka_ doesn’t say anything, but he tussles Yuri’s hair and flicks another small ball of paper towards the kitten with a small smile.

One week after that, Yuri leaves for St. Petersburg and his first skating camp with scabs on his knuckles, a kitten hidden in his suitcase, and the eyes of a soldier.

 

3.

Yuri is eleven years old and about to move to St. Petersburg on his own. His heart pounds a sharp _rat-a-tat-tat_ against his ribs. Even though it’s been doing this off and on for weeks now (everytime he thinks about the future, and sometimes even when he isn’t), he still isn’t sure whether it does so out of panic or anticipation. He chooses anticipation though, because if he didn’t, he’s pretty sure he would stop breathing all together. If he can’t breathe, then he can’t skate and if he can’t skate, then what’s even the point of all this?

He won’t be alone; _Dedushka_ has made sure of this. His new (first) coach keeps an apartment building for his displaced skaters and Yuri has been assured a room in one of them. He will have a roommate; he will be surrounded by world class skaters, maybe even the legendary Victor Nikiforov himself. He will not be alone. But…

 _Dedushka_ will not be there. Yakov has no room for family members and _Dedushka_ has no option to quit his job and move 8 hours away, even if the cost of living in St. Petersburg is far less than it is in Moscow. Yuri knows - he and _Dedushka_ pored over their finances together for weeks, manipulating numbers and trimming costs wherever they could until their budget squeezed them tight like a corset. None of it mattered. No luxury (or even necessity) sacrificed could change the fact that _Dedushka_ owned their shitty Moscow apartment, living rent free, or that his nearly 30 years experience at the oil refinery netted him a far higher salary than anything he could find in St. Petersburg. The cost of his coaching was already a heavy burden on _Dedushka’s_ shoulders and the guilt weighed just as much on Yuri’s heart. He needed to start competing and winning as soon as possible so he could pay for himself.

“Calm yourself, Yurotchka. It will be okay.” _Dedushka’s_ warm, large hand settles against Yuri’s nape and grounds him. He finds himself rocking back into the comforting touch and immediately moves away again. In one hour he will be on a train hurtling towards the coast and smooth ice and a new life. He can’t rely on physical comfort anymore; there will be precious little of it in his future.

Okay, he’s starting to think maybe it’s panic after all.

He shoves it all down deep in his stomach to play with the butterflies there. He can’t afford these feelings anymore. He has to be as hard and unyielding as the ice he skates on, swept smooth and bare and ready for figures and jumps to to be carved into his surfaces where he can learn from them, make them even better.

 _Dedushka_ turns him around by the shoulders and bends over to look him in the eyes. He doesn’t have to bend as far as he had even a month ago. _Dedushka_ tells him that he will be tall like him. This terrifies Yuri. _Dedushka_ has horror stories of growing 8 inches in one summer, then another 6 a few years later; he likes to pull them out any time someone comments on how small Yuri is for his age.

The inch and a half he’s grown already is screwing with him on the ice. If he doesn’t get a hold of himself soon, he’ll be sent packing right back to Moscow with his tail between his stupid, stretched out legs, and then what will he do? Go back to his crappy school, where everyone hates him and he gains nearly as many bruises from “falls” off the ice as he does on it? Endure the kind words and hidden disappointment in _Dedushka’s_ eyes as he tells him it’s okay, and that he can still skate all he wants at the dinky little ice rink he’s been going to since he was three years old and being pulled on wobbling skates by his mama?

No freaking way. He can do this. It’s his body and he can tame it, bend it to his will, because that’s just what skaters do. He thinks of the slinking grace and deceptive violence of the big cats in the nature shows he watches on tv. He decides he will become one of them, even if he has to claw himself apart and stitch the shreds back together afterwards.

 _Dedushka_ sighs and the small smile contradicts the furrow between his brows. “Such fierce eyes my _kotenok_ has.” Yuri narrows his eyes, clenches his jaw, and crosses his arms over his chest. He is not a kitten, he is a mother-freaking tiger, and he says so. _Dedushka_ nods solemnly and there is no amusement or condescension in those eyes. Dedushka believes him.

He cups the side of Yuri’s head. “That you are, Yurotchka. That you are.” He straightens up again with a wince, knuckles digging into his lower back. “But, perhaps this tiger would like the company of one of his own while he is away from his lair?”

Yuri blinks, confused. _Dudushka_ holds up one finger with a smile, and disappears into their (his now) bedroom. He comes out with a pet carrier a moment later and Yuri sucks in a breath, heart racing for a very different reason. _Dedushka_ holds the carrier up so Yuri can peer inside. Yellow eyes glare out at him from the shadows. The creature inside is not a kitten or a cat yet. It is somewhere in between - gangly legs and giant paws with a long scrawny body and delicate ears. The cat is like him, only half grown and a long way to go. He looks up and _Dedushka_ gestures with one hand at the carrier door. Yuri opens it and reaches gently inside.

Instead of soft fur and rumbling purrs, Yuri gets a yowling ball of claws and teeth flying at his face. He watches in shock, one hand pressed over the bleeding scratches on his cheek, as the cat scrambles on clumsy, awkward limbs across the living room and under the couch. _Dedushka_ drops the carrier and pulls Yuri’s hand away from his face. “I’m so sorry, Yurotchka! Marta from work told me she needed a new home for her cat and I thought it would be good for you to have a companion. I never thought that…” He pulls his handkerchief from his pocket and holds it to the scratches, dabbing away blood. “I will bring him back immediately. We will find a new kitten when you next visit.”

Yuri’s eyes widen and his mouth drops open. “Are you kidding? He’s awesome! So cool!” He pulls out of _Dedushka’s_ grip and goes to kneel next to the couch, peering under it. A growl emanates from the far corner. Yuri’s grin is wide and it makes his cheek sting but he doesn’t even care. The cat is perfect and he’s in love.

 _Dedushka_ is not quite so sold on the matter. He’s not sure what takes longer - convincing _Dedushka_ to let him keep the cat, or wrangling it out from under the couch and back into the carrier. Either way, they both end up with a lot of scratches and no time to give much more than a quick hug and kiss to the cheek before Yuri is being rushed onto the train with his suitcase, an envelope with some money for cat supplies, and a very surly cat growling softly in a pet carrier. He waves at _Dedushka_ through the window as his his form gets smaller and disappears entirely. The sharp pang in his heart is offset by the pulling sting of his scratches.

He raises the pet carrier up to his face so he can peer inside, taking care to keep himself out of paw’s reach. “I think I will name you Scorpion,” he whispers to the cat. It growls at him and kneads aggressively at the raggedy towel lining the bottom of the carrier. No doubt he’s sharpening his claws to better slice through Yuri’s skin. “No? Hmm. Well...I am a tiger, so I guess you could be a puma, if you wanted.” An arm pokes through the grate and swipes at him. “Okay, okay!” he yelps, jerking back. “You can be the tiger.” The cat subsides with a few grumbles, but still doesn’t seem entirely satisfied. Yuri tilts his head contemplatively. “Or...maybe all three?” he asks hesitantly. The grumbling quiets and the cats circles a few times in the small confines before settling down with his back to Yuri. That’s about as close to an agreement as Yuri thinks he will ever get. “Puma Tiger Scorpion, then.” Yuri settles back in his seat with the carrier held close in his lap, and stares out the window at the changing scenery.

“You’ll be okay,” he says softly, and he’s not sure if he’s saying it to himself or to the cat.

(It takes a full month and a promise to his roomate to never let Potya out of his room for the cat’s growls to turn to purrs, and by that time, the lonely ache in his heart is small and hardly hurts any more.)

 

4.

Yuri is fourteen and he is wandering through the cat room of a local shelter while Victor goes and gets slobbered on by a bunch of gross dogs. He doesn’t know why he’s even here; it’s Victor’s thing to try and fill the holes in his heart with furry wriggling bodies, under the guise of volunteering. But for whatever reason, Victor has decided that Yuri is in need of some Furr Baby Therapy ™,  and has dragged him out of bed at ass o’clock in the morning on his _one day off_ to go be deafened by the barks and howls of dogs no one wants. Well, fuck that noise. Yuri practically flees to the (relative) quiet of the cat room, ignoring the obvious comparisons with a focus he rarely has off the ice.

It’s not that he dislikes dogs, it’s just that he doesn’t particularly like them either. Makkachin is okay, he supposes, and he takes a certain vicious satisfaction in the fact that, without fail, the dog abandons Victor’s lap for Yuri’s whenever he ends up in the man’s apartment.

Cats though, Yuri _gets_ cats. They don’t go around giving their love to just anyone, and while they might deign to spend their time with you, there is never any doubt that they have not and will _never_ give up their freedom. He can respect that.

Plus, they have razor sharp teeth and claws and can jump heights three times their size and they’re just fucking cool, okay?

Yuri wanders aimlessly down the long room lined with metal cages, looking through the grates and occasionally pausing to watch one of the occupants play with battered toys or curl up sleeping in threadbare, lumpy pet beds. Yuri wonders idly how much cat toys and beds cost, and how he might manage to donate some without Victor ever finding out. Maybe if he gives _Dedushka_ the money and has him do it...but then _Dedushka_ would want to know why he didn’t do it himself, and Yuri doesn’t want to deal with the judging silence he would no doubt get. Maybe they take anonymous donors?

He stops short at one kennel at the far end of the room, spaced several cages away from the next nearest animal. Most of the cats he’d passed were well groomed and bright-eyed, coming up to the grate to sniff at his offered fingers or showing off their healthy pelts as they turned their back to elegantly ignore him. This cat...wasn’t. Doing any of that. This cat had shoved itself as far back into one corner as it could, and glared fiercely at him through crusty, probably infected, eyes. It had bald patches and sores in some spots, and matted and bedraggled fur in others. Yuri thinks it might have been white at some point? It’s ears are notched and ragged, a scar bisects its nose right down the middle and there’s a slight whistle every time it breathes. Yuri can count its ribs.

It is without a doubt, the ugliest creature he has ever seen. And he knows J.J. Leroy.

“We tried to clean him,” says a voice from behind him, startling Yuri and tearing an angry hiss out of the cat. Yuri give it a small nod in solidarity; he kind of wants to hiss too. Instead, he turns around and glares at the girl behind him. She stares impassively back at him, arms crossed over her volunteer t-shirt.

“What,” he says more than asks. She shrugs and looks past his shoulder at the miserable creature behind him.

“We tried to clean him,” she repeats, “But none of us can get close to him for long enough to do it. It takes three of us to pin him down so we can treat his eyes and sores, and even then…” she holds out her arms to display dozens of scratches at various stages of healing. Yuri fights off a wince. Instead, he turns back to the cat, who has curled itself even further into the corner, a constant, rumbling growl vibrating from its throat. “It’s too bad,” she continues behind him, even though he’s emitting Fuck Off vibes almost as strongly as the cat itself. “We can keep him for one more week, but then we have to put him down. It might be a mercy, honestly.” Yuri’s shoulders stiffen. He keeps his eyes locked with the cat’s, as they had been for the last minute or so; he thinks they are fighting for dominance, and he’s honestly not sure which of them is going to win.

“Why are you still talking to me,” he says in a low growl. Behind the grate, the cat shifts restlessly but doesn’t look away.

“I...uh,” the girl sounds flustered for a moment before her voice firms up and takes on an edge of sarcasm. “Because this is the longest I’ve seen _Zloy_ go without trying to rip someone’s face off. I’m...intrigued.”

Yuri wants to tell her exactly where she can shove her intrigue, but the cat (and seriously, they named it Evil? Talk about over kill) stands and gives a long stretch of its spine, then saunters towards the front of the cage. Yuri finds himself leaning forward a little.

“Whoa, uh,”the volunteer says in alarm, “You need to step back, now.” Yuri ignores her, leaning forward a bit more so his face is nearly level with the cat. “Like, seriously, kid, get back!” He brings his hand up and sets the back of his curled fingers against the outside of the cage. She lets out an unintelligible squawk that peters out as the cat butts his head up against Yuri’s hand and starts to purr.

He throws a smug look over his shoulder at the girl, who stares at them with a slack-mouthed look, the very picture of flabbergasted.  “Can I open the cage?” he asks, letting his voice go a little higher and a little more innocent than his stomach can usually handle.

She blinks rapidly and takes an involuntary step back. She looks at him like he is crazy, but says, “As long as you sign a waiver and I’m not in the room then...sure. Your funeral, kid.” She leaves to grab the paperwork and he turns his attention back to the cat. He wiggles his fingers through the grate and only winces a little bit as the cat gnaws on his middle finger for a moment before allowing him to stroke the dirty fur behind his ragged ear.

“You aren’t evil,” he murmurs as the purring intensifies. “You just don’t like people.” He leans a little closer and whispers, “Neither do I.”

When Victor finally comes to find him 45 minutes later, he finds Yuri sitting cross-legged on the floor, gently picking apart matted bits of fur while the cat sprawls limp and happy in his lap. He looks up when Victor pokes his head through the door cautiously.

“I’m adopting this cat, and I’m naming him Puma Tiger Scorpion,” he declares, the set of his jaw daring Victor to challenge him.

“Ooookaaay,” Victor says, drawing the word out and trying to hide his look of distaste behind raised eyebrows and Yuri gathers the liquid cat body in his arms and gracefully stands.

“And I’m donating a fuck ton of money so these cats can have some actual good stuff instead of this hand-me-down shit.” Victor nods.

“I’m...happy for you?”

“You should be,” Yuri sniffs haughtily as he passes by him. Victor’s nose wrinkles a little at the (admittedly kind of terrible) smell that emanates from the cat. Maybe some scratch proof gloves for the volunteers would be a good idea too. “Potya is 10,000 times cooler than Makkachin will ever be.”

Potya and Victor never warm up to each other. Victor blames the thin set of scars along the edge of his gigantic forehead, but Yuri knows it’s just because Potya has good taste.

 

5.

Yuri is fifteen years old and that damn cat _won’t stop yowling_ outside his window. It’s fucking 3am in the morning for the third night in a row and he’s barely slept and he has rink time scheduled at 6 o’fucking clock and that stupid cat won’t “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” he screams and throws his pillow at the window. It hits and slides down the window pane, completely ineffective. The cat just blinks at him serenely. But at least its mouth is finally closed. He lets out a harsh breath and glares at the stupid thing. “Stupid fucking hellspawn,” he grumbles. They engage in a stare off for what seems like an eternity before, as if in slow motion, the cat’s mouth opens and -

“MOTHERFUCKER!” Yuri vaults off the bed, determined to throttle the stupid thing and he should feel bad about these murderous thoughts because he _likes_ cats, damn it, but this isn’t a cat. It’s a demon determined to torture him for...well, he’s not sure what particular wrongdoing, but even he can admit there are plenty to choose from. He yanks the window and screen up so hard that the glass panes rattle and the frame jams but he doesn’t even care right now, he just needs to get his hands on that damn cat and...shove it off the balcony or something. He doesn’t have a solid plan; it’s 3am for fucks sake, no one has a solid plan at 3am.

He reaches out to grab it but somehow (and later he still won’t be quite sure how it managed this, but he will be impressed in spite of himself) the cat dodges him, squeezes through the miniscule gap between the window ledge and Yuri’s body, and is halfway down the hall before his hands are even outside. Yuri stares blankly for a minute, trying to process what just happened. Then his face flushes dark red and he spins and sprints after the animal, shrieking, “Get back here so I can skin you, you piece of shit!” at the top of his lungs. He thinks he might have heard one of his neighbors yelling at him to shut the fuck up out their own window, but Yuri is A) too busy searching for where the ball of mange and malice has disappeared to, and B) has absolutely no fucks to give. Whatsoever.

Yuri doesn’t do sleep deprived very well.

He finds the thing in the kitchen, sitting on top of the fridge and cleaning its ears. Yuri scowls. It’s like the bastard knows that he’s not tall enough to reach it. Well, what it doesn’t know is that Yuri is a dancer and a skater and a _motherfucking tiger_ ; no surface is safe from him.

He vaults up onto the countertop next to the fridge and reaches to grab...air. The cat has already jumped to the ground and taken off into the living room. Yuri hops down with a growl and stalks into the other room to find it already perched on top of that ridiculous china display case Victor gave him last year for his birthday because, you know, Yuri totally has dinnerware that isn’t biodegradable, right? (He may or may not use it to display his medals and trophies and first pair of skates, but he also uses it to store his spare toilet paper, so…)

What follows is half an hour of a truly epic game of hide and seek/tag that ends with Yuri sprawled out on his kitchen floor, panting and most definitely the loser. The cat stares down at him from its original perch atop the fridge like some sort of avenging angel or maybe just an onlooker at the zoo and sadly, Yuri is the animal in this situation. Yuri flips the thing off with both fingers.

The next half hour is spent trying to coax the thing down with a can of tuna he’d bought who the hell even knows how long ago, but no dice. It’s past 4am now and Yuri just...can’t care anymore. He flops down, exhausted, on his bed and inwardly cries at the knowledge that he needs to be up in less than two hours, and that’s _if_ he rolls out of bed and into his clothes, and catches a bus to the rink instead of his normal warm up run.

At least there’s no more yowling, he thinks muzzily just before he slips into sleep.

What feels like 5 minutes later, his phone alarm blares in his ear and he crankily opens his eyes to see a matted, smelly cat butt parked on his pillow not half an inch from his nose. He lets out an undignified squawk before half leaping, half slithering off the bed in an attempt to grab the cat, but it’s already disappeared out the bedroom door and into the murky shadows of his hallway.

When he finally stumbles out of his room in his skate gear and a beanie because fuck brushing your hair, the can of tuna is empty and the cat is nowhere to be seen.

_Cat: 1, Yuri: 0._

  
  


 

Mila laughs hysterically and for far longer than necessary when he grumbles out the story after she asks him point blank why he looks like shit. He’d thought he was too tired to come up with a lie and had mentally said fuck it, but he’s really regretting that decision now.

Yuri resists the urge to kick her (barely) as she rolls theatrically on the floor in the tiny kitchen their rink offers. He wrinkles his nose; he’s seen the shit that ends up on that floor, and none of it would qualify as cleaning supplies. “No, but seriously, do you not see the delicious irony here? Because everyone calls you a kitten, but you’ve been bested by one. Get it?”

“‘m a tiger,” he mumbles under his breath. He wraps his arms around his pulled up knees in an effort to ward off the chill; sleep deprivation always makes him feel the cold more keenly, and today is especially bad. He pulls his hat a little lower, pulls his sweatshirt over his knees, and drops his chin onto them. Mila pushes up so she’s propped up on her elbows and coos at him. “Fuck off, Baba,” he says half heartedly.

“What’s going on in here?” Victor asks as he walks into the kitchen. He steps over Mila and opens the  fridge to get at his gross protein shake thing. His voice is bright and cheerful but his eyes and smile are empty. Yuri narrows his eyes at him.

“Nothing,” he says at the same time as Mila proclaims:

“He had an unexpected visitor last night and they kept him up all. Night. Long.” She waggles her eyebrows with each word and Yuri just knows his face is probably doing a pretty good impression of a tomato right now; he’s suddenly not feeling so cold anymore.

Victor turns to look at him, skin tight around his eyes and expressive mouth turned down at the corners. “Cat!” Yuri blurts out, and flushes even more. He drops his legs back out from under the sweatshirt, embarrassment doing a fine job of heating him back up. “It was just some old alley cat,” he continues sullenly. “Don’t look like that, old man. You’ll end up with wrinkles to match that balding forehead of yours.”

Victor rolls his eyes and finally his expression seems to match his emotions. Of course it would take insulting him to shake him out of whatever funk he’d fallen into. He’d thought for a week or two that the drunken idiot, Katsuki Yuuri, might have actually done what Victor’s rink mates and coach couldn’t manage, but clearly the loser couldn’t even get that right. What kind of asshole wheedled a phone number out of their self professed idol after asking him to coach them, then never even called?

Mother fucking Katsuki, apparently.

“Old alley cat, hmm?” Victor says, bringing one finger up to touch his bottom lip contemplatively. “That’s not code for something I should be worried about, is it?” Mila lets out another hoot of laughter and collapses back to the floor. Yuri frowns. He’s being made fun of here, but fuck if he knows how.

“What the hell would that even be code for?” he snaps, and Victor smiles indulgently. Yuri hates that smile; he gets it a lot, and not just from Victor.

“Glad to see our innocent little fairy is still unsullied,” Victor says as he passes by, nasty-ass drink in hand.

“The fuck does that mean?” Yuri growls, but Victor just pats Yuri on the head, then steals his beanie and pulls it over his own head as he leaves the kitchen. “Hey! That’s mine!”

“Mmm, nice and warm, too,” Victor says, not even bothering to look over his shoulder as he saunters away.

“That makes your forehead look even bigger, old man!” Yuri calls after him. Victor just waves the jab away over his shoulder. Yuri scowls, but honestly, he can’t be that mad; Victor in engaging again. Fucking finally.

Behind him, Mila bursts out in another peal of laughter.

“Yuri, oh my god, your hair!”

  
  


 

He tells _Dedushka_ about it during their weekly phone call.

“I had to get a cat box,” he whines, sneering at The Cat, who is currently washing itself atop the china cabinet.

 _Dedushka_ doesn’t laugh at Yuri, but he can tell he wants to.

“I’m glad you have some companionship,” he says instead. Yuri just barely resists the urge to bang his head against the wall. He glares at the stupid cat instead. It cleans its ears and continues to ignore him.

“Yeah, whatever,” he mumbles, and turns away.

  
  


 

Things get worse. The Cat refuses to leave, but fucking Victor sure as hell does.

Yuri knows it has something to do with that little piggy, Yuri 2.0; he leaves just a few days after that stupid (okay, and maybe just a little impressive) video of Katsuki doing _that_ routine pops up on the internet. Yuri’s not stupid; he may be flirting with the idea of giving up on a secondary school degree, but even he knows that A plus B equals C. He just has to figure out exactly what C is, and where B went, to go find it.

Yuri lays sprawled on his bed, scrolling through Instagram. He idly takes yet another picture of The Cat to post to his account. She’s currently sprawled over his toes, ignoring the little nudge-kicks he delivers to her (much fatter now that he’s given in and started feeding her) belly. She eventually moved off his feet and instead walks up the bed to come sniff at his hair before settling next to him. Occasionally she lets him touch her now, and even pet her, as long as he makes no moves to grab her. She sleeps on the small of his back at night and it always aches a little in the morning, but for some reason he keeps letting her do it. He may have even given her a name: Puma Tiger Scorpion, because it’s both badass and ridiculous. Also, there may or may not have been some vodka fueling that decision, but that’s between him and Potya and everyone else can just go eat a dick.

So yeah, he’s maybe not trying as hard to get rid of her as he was before. He chooses not to examine his choices too closely.

Yuri’s eyes catch on one picture in particular in his feed, and he lets out a triumphant yell. Victor is posting to his account; he in some bumfuck Japanese town called Hasetsu and he would bet his entire medal collection that Katsuki is there too.

“Hasetsu Castle,” he reads. “Does he want to be a ninja or something?” Yuri could totally be a ninja if he wanted to. Not that he does.

“Okay,” he says to Potya, “Now I know where he is.”  He pulls up his browser, researching flights. He needs Victor to choreograph his routines if he stands any chance of gold in his debut season, and for that, he needs Victor. “Just wait, Victor, I’ll see you soon!”

Potya grumbles next to him as his movements jostle her, but doesn’t react otherwise. Yuri thinks of all those nights he was kept up by this stupid creature, and the urge to yell and bounce up and down on the mattress is so strong he has a really hard time corralling it in. If he’s leaving for Japan, then he needs Potya to trust him enough to let him pick her up so he can _finally_ get her out of his apartment.

The thought makes something sticky crawl into his throat. It’s been a good two months since Potya has seen the outside of this apartment. She’s not a kitten, so she’s obviously spent plenty of time outside fending for herself (never mind the fact that he thinks she may have belonged to the previous owner of the apartment, and the thought makes something in his stomach feel sick and squirmy.) She’s not _his_ cat. She’s not his responsibility. He owes her nothing.

He sits on the bed and books his flight and pets her soft fur gently and pretends very hard that the lump in his throat and sour twists of his stomach are anticipation for his trip, and not guilt. For a moment, he contemplates giving in and admitting to Mila or Georgi that Potya is still there and could one of them please look after this stupid cat that isn’t his but won’t leave his house? But he would never hear the end of it. Never. Not when he vehemently denies that he enjoys her presence every chance he gets. He gets up slowly so he won’t jostle her, and packs as quietly as he can. He booked a same day flight, and he needs to leave soon if he wants to get there with plenty of time to get through security.

He still spends another ten minutes just petting her and listening to her purr. Finally, he looks at his phone and sees a text that his Uber is here. He can’t put this off any longer. Slowly, he slides his hands under her and picks her up, cradling her body carefully. This is the first time he’s actually held her. She stirs, gives a small meow, but stays pliant in his arms.

Yuri does not tear up. He doesn’t.

She starts to tense when he eases his window screen open (his actual window hasn’t closed for months, not since he’d first wrenched it open to try and grab her). For once, he’s faster than her; he dumps her out onto the balcony and slams the screen shut before she can get back inside. Almost immediately she begins to yowl, and he doesn’t think he’s ever fled a place so fast. Even safely ensconced in the Uber, he he can hear her. He swallows hard and does what he does best: takes every feeling that isn’t anger and shoves it down so deep inside that it’s almost as if it isn’t even there. Thoughts of Victor take over his thoughts. He lets the fury come and wash everything else away (like that tiny voice that says that what he’s doing is no better than what Victor did. It’s not the same. It’s _not_.)

He’s on a plane, then in a country with incomprehensible words and signs all around him. He fights tooth and nail for something he was _promised_ , god damn it, against someone who barely deserves it and probably won’t even appreciate it. He still loses.

And then he’s back in Russia, dragging himself up the steps to his apartment and he is angry and sad and abandoned and determined and so, so tired. He unlocks his door, and stops dead to stare at what has become of his home.

His kitchen and living room are a mess of kibble and paper bits that used to be a cat food bag. Abandoned cans of wet food are rolled into corners with their paper wrappers half gnawed off, and he's pretty sure those are rodent guts drying to the floor.

There is a gaping hole in his bedroom’s window screen and muddy footprints and little bloody feathers everywhere, but she's curled up on his pillow and she _hasn't left_.

 

+1

Potya is six years old when Yuri and Otabek become roommates. At least, Yuri thinks she is. He is 19 and has had her for the last four years, and she had been fully grown when she bullied her way into his life. They have moved more than once in those years, and they have a routine. Yuri packs his things in boxes. Potya grows more and more neurotic by the day because she isn’t stupid and knows what boxes mean. On the day they move, Yuri carries his boxes out of whatever place he’d been staying, while Potya hides under her favorite armchair. It’s Yuri’s favorite chair as well; it’s second hand from his _Dedushka_ and the fabric is faded and softened with age. The seat and arms are perfectly broken in for maximum comfort and it’s wide enough for Potya to curl up next to him if he sits sideways with his legs thrown over one arm and head pillowed on the other. If he turns his head into the upholstery, he can smell the faint scent of _Dedushka’s_ pipe smoke.

After the boxes comes his furniture, everything except for her hiding place. When the place is empty of all save Yuri, Potya, and the chair, Yuri lays down on the floor next to it, arm pillowed on one arm, and watches his cat. He stays mostly quiet, occasionally murmuring comforting nonsense to her while she shifts around uneasily. Sometimes she meows unhappily. Sometimes he meows back. They will stay in their stand off for five minutes, or fifteen, or fifty, but eventually she creeps out and into his arms, and they cuddle for a few minutes before he gingerly nudges her into her carrier. At that point, it’s a race against time for him to get the chair out of the house and get back in to grab Potya before she starts to really freak out and he has to spend another hour calming her down so she doesn’t yowl the entire trip and drive him insane.

Yuri has been laying beside the chair for over an hour now. Otabek leans in the front doorway, arms crossed over his chest, watching them. He shifts every once in a while, and Yuri knows that he has the patience of a saint, but even saints have their limits. Yuri is fast coming up on his own.

“Come _on_ , Potya,” he cajoles, trying to keep annoyance out of his voice.

“How long does this usually take?” Otabek asks, voice level. Too level. It’s his ‘I’m really annoyed right now but I don’t want you to know that’ voice. (It’s very different from his ‘I don’t want you to know that I’m have emotions right now, but I’m totally having emotions right now’ voice, but apparently Yuri is the only one who can tell the difference.)

“I don’t know,” Yuri says tightly. Otabek shifts and sighs.

“Is there anything I can do?” It’s the third time he’s asked. Yuri grits his teeth and breathes deep.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Yuri’s patience snaps. He twists to glare at the other man. “You could leave,” he snaps.

Otabek straightens, a frown on his face. He opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, Potya bolts out from under the chair and streaks across the room. “Shit!” Yuri yelps, scrambling up. Otabek lunges down and reaches for her, but she’s too fast. She’s out the door and down the apartment stairs before either of them can do much to stop her.

“Potya!” Yuri yells, chasing after her. He crashes shoulders with Otabek as he passes and his friend stumbles but Yuri doesn’t bother checking to see if he’s okay. He slams into the apartment building’s front door (they had propped it open while moving everything and why the hell did they do that? Stupid!) He lurches to a stop outside the building, looking around wildly, but she’s gone.

Otabek nearly runs into his back but manages to stop just in time. His face is a mask of panic and guilt and some small part of Yuri thinks that he’s never seen so much raw emotion on his face. The rest of him is filled with pure, unbridled rage.

“Yura -” he starts, but Yuri doesn’t let him continue. He shoves him hard enough make Otabek step backwards.

“This is YOUR fault!” he screams, and the tears threatening to fall are ones of anger. Really.

“I’m sorry,” Otabek says in a small voice.

“I don’t fucking care!” Yuri growls. “Just, fuck you. _Fuck you._ ”

“I’ll find her,” he says desperately. “I promise, I’ll find her, no matter what. Yura…”

Yuri shakes his head, fists clenched, eyes watering, and Yuri loves Otabek (more than Otabek even knows, or ever will know, if Yuri has anything to say about it), but right now he can’t even stand to look at him. “No! Fuck off, okay? I don’t want your help, I’ll find her myself.”

Otabek stands silently in front of him, shoulders hunched and eyes downcast. Yuri scrubs roughly at his own eyes, rage draining away to just leave fear and frustration and a little bit of guilt for making his usually stoic friend look like that. It’s not really Otabek’s fault. It’s Yuri’s.

He grits his teeth. “Just...take the truck and bring everything over to the new place, okay? It’ll help if everything’s already set up when I bring her back.”

“...Okay,” Otabek says in a voice just above a whisper. He looks like he wants to apologize again, and so help him if he does, because Yuri might just punch him. Otabek seems to realize that, because he just turns to go back into the apartment, presumably to get the chair. Yuri doesn’t stick around. He picks a random direction and takes off down the street, calling for her.

He searches for hours, until the sky is dark and he has blisters on his feet from his stupid, impractical leopard print shoes. Heavy hearted, he returns to the apartment and slumps on the front steps.

He tries to quell the panic that wants to crawl its way up his throat. Potya will be fine. She spent the first part of her life outside. Nevermind the fact that she hasn’t left the apartment since he had tried to kick her out during his trip to Japan. She was a smart cat; once she calmed down, she would come back. After all, he’d spent _months_ trying to get her to leave, to no avail. She spent so much effort wriggling her way into his life; no way was she just going disappear from it so easily.

Yuri bursts into tears.

He doesn’t know how long he’s out there, bawling like a little baby for anyone to see, before he hears steps come up behind him and come to a stop.

“Yura?” It’s Otabek. Yuri hides his face in his hands, not wanting him to see, then realizes that this is _Beka_. He drops his hands back into his lap.

“I couldn’t find her,” he says in a tired, empty voice. Otabek drops a hand down onto his shoulder.

“I tried to call you,” he says. Yuri listlessly pulls his phone from his pocket. It’s dead. Huh. He turns his head to look at Otabek, and is surprised to see a small smile curling the corners of his lips. Yuri’s heart leaps in his chest. “I found her outside one of your windows about 20 minutes ago.”

Yuri is scrambling to his feet and pounding up the stairway before Otabek even finishes the sentence. The apartment door is carefully closed Yuri wrenches it open and staggers on aching legs into the living room. There, curled up asleep in the spot where the armchair used to sit, is Potya. She ignores him completely as he rushes to her and falls to his knees beside her.

“Potya!” he cries in joy, and goes to gather her up into her arms and possibly never let go again. He stops suddenly, hands halfway to her, just hovering uselessly in the air.

“Uh, yeah,” Otabek says awkwardly from behind him, and Yuri can practically hear him sheepishly scratching at the back of his head. “She turned up with...that...in her mouth and hasn’t let me get anywhere near them.”

‘That’ is a tiny, mewling ball of fur and grime. Half of it is slicked wet from Potya’s tongue and the look on its face is...well, disgruntled doesn’t come close.

“What,” Yuri says flatly. Otabek crouches down behind him and hooks his chin over his shoulder. He is a long line of heat along his back and it momentarily distracts him before he focuses back on the issue at hand. “What,” he says again, because what the hell else is he supposed to say, other than tagging ‘the fuck’ onto the end of it.

Potya finally seems to notice them and pauses bathing the pathetic looking kitten she’s curled around. She yawns and stands up, stretching, then catches the kitten by the scruff as it tries to escape. As Yuri and Otabek sit there gaping like damn idiots, she brings it over and plops it unceremoniously in Yuri’s lap. He catches it before it tumbles off his thighs, then cups it carefully as it immediately tries to escape. He lifts it up close to his nose as it starts gnawing on his fingers. Under the grime, he thinks the kitten is a tuxedo type. Its eyes are bright blue, and the thing looks old enough that Yuri thinks the color is going to stay. Curious, Yuri turns it around and lifts the tail. A girl. The kitten swipes at him indignantly.

“Huh.”

Otabek drops his forehead to Yuri’s shoulder. “We’re getting another cat, aren’t we,” he mutters into Yuri’s back. Yuri smiles.

“I’m going to name her Panther Python Hammerhead,” he declares.

Potya purrs smugly.

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: Yuri comes across a boy trying to get rid of some kittens by smashing them with a rock/drowning them. Of the three, only one survives.
> 
> Come join me on Tumblr at [Disasterbek-altin](https://disasterbek-altin.tumblr.com). We can geek out together about these beautiful idiot boys.


End file.
